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Biography
Other uses2|AcheronInfobox River| river_name = Acheron| image_name = Acheron river 2.jpg| caption = Acheron river near the village of Glyki.| origin = Ioannina (regional unit)|Ioannina regional unit , Epirus | mouth = Ionian Sea Coord|39|14|10|N|20|28|34|E|display=inline,title| basin_countries = Greece | length = 58 km| elevation =| discharge =| watershed =The Acheron (lang-el|?????? or ??????ta?) is a river located in the Epirus (region)|Epirus region of northwest Greece . Its source is near the village Selles, Greece|Zotiko , in the southwestern part of the Ioannina (regional unit)|Ioannina regional unit It flows into the Ionian Sea in Ammoudia, Preveza|Ammoudia , near Parga .
Mythology
In ancient Greek mythology , Acheron was known as the river of pain, and was one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld . In the Homer ic poems the Acheron was described as a river of Hades , into which Cocytus and Phlegethon both flowed. Homer , The Odyssey x. 513 Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias , Description of Greece i. 17, § 5
The Roman poet Virgil called it the principal river of Tartarus , from which the Styx (mythology)|Styx and Cocytus both sprang. Virgil , Aeneid vi. 297 The newly-dead would be ferried across the Acheron by Charon (mythology)|Charon in order to enter the Underworld.Virgil, Aeneid 6. 323
The Suda describes the river as "a place of healing, not a place of punishment, cleansing and purging the sins of humans." http://www.stoa.org/sol/ Suda On Line
According to later traditions, Acheron had been a son of Helios and either Gaia (mythology)|Gaia or Demeter , who had been turned into the Underworld river bearing his name after he refreshed the Titan (mythology)|Titans with drink during their contest with Zeus . By this myth, Acheron is also the father of Ascalaphus by either Orphne Ovid , Metamorphoses 5. 539 or Gorgyra .Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 33
The river called Acheron with the nearby ruins of the Necromanteion is found near Parga on the mainland opposite Corfu . Another branch of Acheron was believed to surface at the Acherusian cape (now Eregli in Turkey ) and was seen by the Argonauts according to Apollonius of Rhodes . Greeks who settled in Italy identified the Acherusian lake into which Acheron flowed with Lake Avernus . Plato in his Phaedo identified Acheron as the second greatest river in the world, excelled only by Oceanus . He claimed that Acheron flowed in the opposite direction from Oceanus beneath the earth under desert places.
The word is also occasionally used as a synecdoche for Hades itself. Virgil mentions Acheron with the other infernal rivers in his description of the underworld in Book VI of the Aeneid . In Book VII, line 312Line 312 in the conventional lineation, see J.W. Mackail (Editor and Translator), The AEneid (Clarendon press, Oxford: 1930), p. 271. he gives to Juno the famous saying, flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo : 'If I cannot deflect the will of Heaven, I shall move Hell.' The same words were used by Sigmund Freud as the dedicatory motto for his seminal book The Interpretation of Dreams , figuring Acheron as psychological underworld beneath the conscious mind.
The Acheron was sometimes referred to as a lake or swamp in Greek literature, as in Aristophanes ' The Frogs and Euripides ' Alcestis .
In Dante Alighieri|Dante 's The Divine Comedy|Inferno , the Acheron river forms the border of Hell . Following Greek mythology, Charon (mythology)|Charon ferries souls across this river to Hell. Those who were neutral in life sit on the banks.
Popular Culture / Fiction
The name Acheron also takes on a proper noun in the novelization of James Cameron's sequel 'Aliens' in 1986 by Alan Dean Foster (Paperback / Warner Books Inc (Mm) June 1986ISBN-10: 0446301396 / ISBN-13: 978-0446301398). Where in the film, the alien planet is referred to solely as LV-426, in the novel, LV-426 is revealed to Lt. Ellen Ripley to have the actual name of Acheron where a colony has recently been founded, but this is news to Ripley who'd been in hypersleep for the previous 57 years.
Category:Greek gods Category:Greek mythology Category:Sea and river gods Category:Rivers of Greece Category:Rivers of Hades Category:Geography of ancient Epirus Category:Epirotic mythology Category:Preveza (regional unit)
